


Too Late

by Merfilly



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:20:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slade got back too late to get to his little bird before she turned to Oliver. Now, is he too late to save her at all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Late

**Author's Note:**

> This is dark, starts off with death, gets worse from there.

He noted the smell of death first and foremost. The quiet settled on his senses a moment later, letting him know he was far too late. He cursed the way fate had treated him, first returning him to this world after his other self had terrorized everyone he had cared about, and that only after the woman he had chosen had given herself back to that damn archer.

Now, that same woman had gone missing with her boy, on the trail of the culprits that had killed half their family and taken the little girl both of them loved more than life. He had only found out when the news of Oliver Queen and Mia Dearden's bodies being discovered had broken. Connor Hawke, the other son, was still in critical condition, and only alive by the force of a certain Green Lantern's will.

He found the boy first, his body reposed quite lovingly as if he were only asleep. The marks told the story; Harper had died in pain, a victim of torture. That his body had been shifted...the little bird had survived, been free, at least at some point.

He continued further in, glad he had not let his son know, that the Titans would not walk blindly into this. It would throw too many of them off if they saw that boy dead, that way. He could still only hear the hum of power to the complex, no signs of life, which was not that surprising, given the bodies he was finding. Broken necks, the vast majority of them, though some showed other, more direct marks of violence.

Dinah Lance was not a woman to be pushed over an edge like this. 

Finding her was a simple thing as he got closer to the heart of the complex. Her scent guided him in, the smell of raw anger, blinding grief, and pure adrenaline. Blood laid over the top of it, blood heavy with the scent of death. He followed it to the source, and felt a surge of adrenaline himself. There, under the scents, under the hum of energy in the air, there was a slow, weak sound. Heartbeat...no, a pair of them.

He cleared the room, watching for trouble, until he found the woman laying face down, a smaller body curled tight against her side. That one moved at his approach, small hands cupped around a gun, eyes glassy but tracking him.

"Easy, Lian...Dart...that's what your Aunt calls you, and your father," Slade said softly. "I'm here to help. I'm going to get you and your Aunt safe, back to where Rose is living." He did not want to spook her, did not have the time to deal with disarming her in a way that would not scare her more than she had already been.

"Aunt Dinah told me to stay here," she whispered. "Then she closed her eyes." Her own eyes stayed on him, that gun remaining where it would, at the very least, cause him a nasty bruise through the armor.

"She needs help, Dart. So do you. Let me help you, let me get you both to Rose."

The gun shook a little, slowly lowering, and he moved, still keeping his movements easy to not frighten her. A check of the woman's pulse showed him what his ears had already told him, that it was thready and none too strong.

"She promised not to leave us," the little girl whispered, eyes dry with shock still freezing most of her reactions.

"And I'm not going to let her, Dart. I'll make you that promise, that I'll do all I can for you both." He checked the child over, finding no obvious injuries. "I need you to be big now, to ride my back, so I can carry your Aunt."

"I can," Lian told him, using both hands to push the safety on her gun, before clambering up and holding on to him with legs and one arm, that gun resting in her small hand against his shoulder. If that was what it took to keep her calm, he could endure it, his arms slowly going under the broken, hurt body of his former lover and partner. He straightened, felt the child holding on securely, and carried them both out. He did not tell the girl to close her eyes; she had seen death all around her in the room where Dinah had made her last, very effective stand. He was careful not to retrace by the room with Harper.

Once he was out, he hiked across to the jeep he had ridden out here in, and found the comm band his son had given him. Activating it, he told the Titans he needed immediate assistance, left the band open, and turned his attentions on stabilizing Dinah.

They would come; he didn't ask for help lightly.

It just was going to be a matter of time and persuasion to see if the woman he labored over would be able to live, at least for the girl.

* * *

The Titans had arrived to find Deathstroke giving extensive medical aid to Black Canary, a small child close enough to touch. They had looked at the compound in the distance, and one low word stopped their instinctive need to go to it.

"Don't." Enough emotion ranged in that to make Raven reinforce the order. 

"We'll hold the perimeter, get law enforcement here," she told him. 

"Just don't go in," he told them, a firm look at Jericho. His son nodded, knowing that protective streak when he heard it.

[Beast Boy will pilot you and them back. Tower, or hospital?] Jericho signed. 

[Tower facilities are enough, and she is going to need people nearby.] Deathstroke did not offer an explanation for how he knew, or why he was here. That could come later, after his little bird was stable. "Rose, come with us...Lian needs you."

"Of course, Daddy."

* * *

The Titans were in mourning for their fallen ones. Speedy and Red Arrow both had been theirs, and now both were gone. Two more statues.

Slowly, the events unfolded. How vendettas between the Star City contingent of heroes and sub-sect of the League of Assassins had spilled over into this bloody conflagration. Lian being taken, strictly to lure in Black Canary and Red Arrow who had not been in residence when the attack happened.

Cheshire finding these things out.

That revelation had come as a surprise. Slade had not made it past the room Canary had fallen in, but the dangerous poisoner had been there, also dead. From what the little Martian Manhunter could pull from Lian's still fragile mindset, her mother and aunt had found her, freed her, but Jade had been injured more severely than the Canary. 

Blood tests showed Jade had given the other woman a drug to increase her resistance to her injuries, something to allow her to fight through all but a mortal wound. Slade had no doubt it had also lowered the Canary's inhibitions to lethal force, given what he had seen.

They wouldn't know much beyond that until the woman was conscious, the details of how the two heroes had been captured, when Dinah had reached Roy, or just how Jade had died. Slade had let the Martian work with Lian only to a point, stepping in with Rose and Troia both rather than risk any damage to her mind by an inadvertent reminder she was not capable of handling yet.

The child slept in Rose's room at all times, watched over by the teen and occasionally by Bart, now that he had returned to them from his seeming death.

Slade kept his ears open, for the chance of any survivors from that attack on his little bird's family. He wanted someone to have escaped. Someone to be his target. Someone that would give him something to do.

Something other than watch Dinah refuse to heal, other than watching her sleep on life support, her heart constantly monitored to prevent any more crashes.

The mercenary was a constant presence at Titan's Tower, lending support to his son, to his daughter...to Nightwing, who had come back in a sober state of mind that had all but shut the light out of him.

The tragedy continued to ripple out, and all they could do was wait.


End file.
